Ragged
by ValorTheory
Summary: 1940-50's. Jean's life was planned down to what he'd eat for lunch in two months. But, then came the unexpected. He'd never imagined the unexpected would take the shape of a roommate so soft around the edges. He'd never imagined it coming from someone like Marco. One-shot. Companion piece. Jean/Marco.


_Quick Note: This is a companion piece to my other fic, "Electroshock." While I don't think it's totally necessary to read to understand what's going on, it will certainly help. That said, here you go..._

_..._

Sometime in the late 1940's...

I.

They poured more ice into the tub. It avalanched over his frigid skin and seemed to just roll over his huddled form. He flinched. They moved to hold him down, and he felt his limbs freeze, his fingers go numb. His blood was so cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. It was unbearable. He wanted warm blood again. He wanted gentle touches. He wanted relief. All he wanted was the warmth he once knew.

_His _warmth.

But he was gone now.

And everything was misery.

II.

Jean was the kind of guy to plan out his whole future. He'd done it from day one. What he was going to eat that day, who he was going to be with...it made life efficient and hassle-free. He didn't worry about the unexpected, mostly because he'd anticipated it ahead of time and was well equipped to handle it. The unexpected usually came in the form of bad weather, a traffic jam, a bad date. Mundane surprises.

He never thought the unexpected would come in the shape of a roommate so soft around the edges.

Marco was all part of the routine at first. When they met for the first time with all of their unpacking strewn about the dorm room, nothing really stood out about him other than his freckles. He was a background character, not anything special.

Marco didn't have a plan. Didn't even know what he wanted to major in. Not like Jean. He didn't know for certain that he would graduate at top of the class, start a law firm, live well, run for office in his mid-thirties. Not like Jean at all. That somehow irritated him, but they got along fine.

Mostly, they existed harmoniously with few words in between. It was all very casual. Sleep in the same room at night, sometimes chat about assignments and professors.

No. Jean wasn't prepared for the unexpected at all. Not from Marco.

III.

Jean looked up from his text book while lying on his bed. Marco was hacking away at the typewriter, completely focused.

'He's handsome,' he thought. Realizing what had passed through his mind, he bit his lip and forced himself back into the fallacies buried somewhere in the jumble of words on the page.

It didn't mean anything.

IV.

When Marco shuffled into their room with a stack of books in his arms, he noticed everything out of place in an instant. The top buttons of Jean's dress shirt were undone, his cheeks were flushed. He was slouched in the chair at the desk instead of sitting upright and properly, and he had heavy bags under his eyes. One whiff of the air told him that this was what Drunk-Jean looked like.

After a significant struggle and many bruises, he got him cleaned up and changed, laid him down on his bed.

"Jean, you okay?" he asked, eyes examining him dutifully. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and watched his eyelids flutter.

"I's all wrong s'mhow," he slurred. He rolled onto his side, facing Marco. "Went ta' frat party. Assholes."

Marco chuckled and smoothed Jean's hair. He spoke quietly to him until he fell asleep. He kissed his forehead when he did. He didn't know why.

V.

Something was different after that. Jean went to class and his pencil hardly scratched the paper at all. The droning of the professor went on and on until he dismissed the class and Jean stumbled out the door in a haze. The walls were bending inwards.

He kept thinking about freckles. He kept thinking about black hair and a light voice.

He would wait in their room until Marco came back from his English lecture. He would strike up a conversation, desperate for his attention but never knowing why. He'd have to force himself not to move next to him on his bed and press against his side.

He learned a lot about him in those hours spent talking. That he played piano, that he grew up in the dust of the Depression, that he was an only child, like him. His favorite color was yellow because it was a happy color and he wanted a Basset Hound badly enough to steal one. Marco went from an empty white canvas to a masterpiece filled with color and vibrancy.

VI.

Jean was looking at Marco's typewriter one night. His roommate had gone home for holiday and he was alone in the dorm. Thoughtlessly, he wandered over to the desk and opened the oak drawer, the one that scraped loudly. There was a stack of papers in there, clipped together. It didn't have a title. Just Marco's name.

It was poetry.

He spent the next five days reading through all of it, even when he knew he shouldn't. Each line stirred a longing within him, and he found himself drawing life from those pages. He felt himself drawing Marco.

He wanted to see the real thing again.

VII.

When Marco returned, they kissed and it was an accident. Jean wasn't looking and Marco hadn't expected it, so when he opened the door and Jean was going out and he was going in, it just sort of...happened.

They stood there in the threshold, lips locked together clumsily, staring wide-eyed and frozen in the moment. Jean blushed heavily and jerked back, stumbling into the room and apologizing anxiously. He stopped when Marco said nothing, and saw him just staring at him.

The taller student dropped his bags on the floor and closed the door. He wore his black coat with the scarf still coiled around his neck as he pulled his gloves off. Jean stayed still, worrying his lip and almost violently wishing for the feel of that contact there to remain tingling on him.

"Sorry, I-I should have watched where I was going," he whispered nervously when Marco still hadn't said a word. "Um, welcome back, I guess." Marco moved closer to Jean until they were a foot apart and he tilted his head to the side. His eyes were curious.

Marco slowly reached up to slide his hands up Jean's sleeved arms, and the brunet gave a quiet sigh. Even the air had turned intimate and soft like feather breaths. They moved like a wave, Marco's arms wrapping around him and Jean pressing into his chest, both of them practically rolling. Slowly.

The second time they kissed was not an accident. It was reaching and pushing and tentative. It was hesitation and question. Jean felt himself relax slowly to the warmth of his touch, sliding to rest his hands on his neck and run his fingers through his hair. And the warmth spread. It spread forever.

VIII.

He was moaning. That was certain fact. Marco admired him in the dim light, bare skin slick, eyes shut tight in bliss, throat strained for every breathless gasp. The corded muscles of him were exquisite and the mismatched colors of his hair clung to his forehead. He leaned down to run his tongue along his bottom lip and Jean opened up to him on learned instinct — like it belonged there. Books were abandoned on the floor. The mattress creaked with every wet thrust.

It was beauty.

It was the new normal.

VIIII.

Jean stared at his notes blankly. It was sophomore year. He'd dropped law. He was a music major now. He strummed his guitar with Marco's piano on weekends, and he was terrified.

Having a major in music wasn't going to get him elected or rich or successful. It demolished every detail he'd set for his life to come. He wouldn't earn enough for a decent house or one room apartment. He'd be a hobo. He'd be a stinky, gay hobo with a worthless music degree.

He professed these concerns to his partner by moping around their room for nearly a month. Marco smiled fondly at him and shook his head.

"That's the thing about you."

"What?" he groaned indignantly.

Marco leaned back in his chair to look at him from across the room. "You have all these big ambitions and plans and stuff, and you try to act like you know exactly what you're doing. And when you don't have a plan, when you're clueless, you freak out."

"I do not!"

"It'll be fine. We'll stick together."

Jean didn't worry very much about his career after that.

IX.

The guys across the hall from them gave them glares whenever they stepped outside. Marco told Jean he was worried. Jean nodded understandingly and looked out the window. He puffed up his bravado and told him it was nothing to worry about. He could handle anything.

The guys across the hall joined a fraternity, and were soon forgotten.

Jean took Marco out to an Italian place. They let their worries slip from their minds. They drowned them in marinara sauce. The radio buzzed its newscast about the war. Germany was going to lose. Germany was going to lose.

Marco brushed his foot against Jean's. They were fine. No one was looking.

No one was looking.

X.

"Just for a couple of hours, Marco."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Hannah and Franz are going, so it should be fine. I've been out before. I know what I'm doing. Quit being a hermit and let's go!"

They got ready, wearing casual jeans and jackets, heading out into the cool early spring night. Their fingers were woven together under darkness until they reached the front porch of the frat house. The edge of the street light was inches away from their shoes, and they leaned in for a quick peck before releasing their hands and bouncing up the porch steps.

There were drinks and laughing and girls winking with a flirtatiousness their mother's would never know about. Pool and jokes and a sweet new radio on the coffee table. Drunk staggering and stupid stories.

Hannah and Franz were pleasant as always, greeting the two of them with pleasant smiles and full glasses. They mostly spent the evening with them, content to feel the buzz of alcohol and drift through the crowd. But soon it was nearly one in the morning, and they felt it was time to leave.

They didn't notice the guys that were once across the hall whispering to friends.

Out on the porch, their fingers automatically sought each other as if connected by magnets. They took the long way back, walking through the park.

"Hey, Marco?"

He hummed contently and leaned against Jean. "Hmm?"

He swallowed somewhat nervously, his hand tightening in its grip. "You know when you went on break? Visited your Mom and everything for the holidays?" Marco nodded curiously. "Yeah. I, um, found your poetry."

Marco paused. "Jean," he started

"I know I shouldn't have without your permission, but I read all of it," he continued. "And I just wanted to say that—"

"Jean," he insisted.

"—that it was really good."

And he thought it was all the wrong things coming out of his mouth, but Marco kissed him like he wanted to keep them there forever, those words halfway between mouth and ears and hearts. When they reluctantly peeled apart, the freckled boy's eyes were practically glimmering. "Well, could you tell?" he asked.

"Tell what?" Jean murmured, reaching up to kiss his neck, eyes sliding shut.

"Which ones were about you."

But Jean never got to answer.

XI.

When he opened his eyes, he felt the chill of the night air and reached for Marco's warmth blearily. On instinct.

It wasn't there.

Instead, there was the ground — damp and cold and hard against his fingertips. He felt the pounding and painful thumping of his head, and there were bruises on his arms and knees. He groaned, his vision finally clearing, and moved to get up. A heavy foot slammed between his shoulder blades, and it was all he could do to keep his teeth from breaking against the root of a tree.

"Stay down, you godless fag. I can't believe this. Schools let sinners like you in?"

And then the pieces were lining up, all in a row. Jean saw that he was pressed up against the forest floor, probably the outskirts of town. There were five or six of them, and he suddenly remembered that Marco was with him when they knocked him out.

"Marco?" he croaked. The foot increased its pressure and someone told him to shut up. But he was too scared, and his mind had narrowed down on that single point of freckles and black hair. "Marco! Marco!" he cried. His voice was raw and scratchy with desperation. "Marco!"

And then his vision went swampy again when a boot collided with his head.

He didn't let it linger though, because he caught a flashing glimmer of metal reflecting the flicker of the fire in front of him. He strained his neck, lifting his head.

"...Marco..."

His eyes were half shut, his mouth slightly open with shallow breaths. The rope around his ankles bound him to the legs of the chair they'd dragged out. His glazed eyes lifted slowly to rest upon Jean and they stayed there. They stayed there as the guy behind him raised the axe. They stayed on him when he swung it down and his body jerked forward, blood quickly flowing to stain his shirt and run down his arm. They stayed on him when Jean screamed his lungs out and when Jean made his lungs keep going and he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. They stayed on him when it took nine more hacks at his shoulder to get the arm off. They stayed there when he couldn't move his fingers anymore, even though they were right there in front of him. No expression. Shock.

Jean was thrashing and they were hitting him. God, that made Marco sad. But he was getting paler and one of the frat boys saw.

"Hey, it might be trouble if he bleeds to death now. Let the sinner get a taste of what his afterlife will be in Hell."

So one of them lifted a torch. They burned his side until he stopped bleeding. Cauterization.

He didn't make a sound.

He just kept staring at Jean.

And Jean kept screaming.

XII.

_'Stop...'_

_'Stop...'_

_'STOP!.'_

XIII.

Jean woke up cold. The nurse was stooped over him, her features expressionless. He opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but she shushed him with a finger to her lips.

She was cold.

She left, pulling the white curtain that separated his area from other patients shut. He felt the itch of a bandage wrapped around his throat, felt the tug of stitches there holding his skin together. There was a cast around his wrist. His bruises pulsed all over.

And he was cold.

He cried. He cried cold tears for a long time.

XIV.

"What was your relationship with your roommate?"

"We were roommates. Friends." The hospital sheets were starchy and stiff against his wounds. The police officer was questioning him now. There was disdain in his voice. Jean was numb.

"Is that all?"

"Yes." He resisted a sigh. "That's all we were, officer."

"Alright then. That was my last question. Good day." He turned stiffly and shoved his note pad carelessly into his pocket. And Jean felt the temporary shock for a second.

"Wait!" The officer paused. "What happened? Where's Marco now? He's okay, right? You're going to interview him next, right?"

When he turned around to face him, his eyes were cold. "It's hard to interview someone who can't talk."

His eyes were wide. Jean was cold. Jean was so cold.

XV.

He dreamed about him that night.

They were in their room, the typewriter on the desk like it always was. But where the wall behind the desk normally was, there was instead the open air, a thousand feet below them. There wasn't wind.

"Marco," he'd said. His back was to him, looking out through the hole as clouds passed below.

"Hi, Jean. How was class? Did Hannes give you a hard time again?"

And then Jean was angry. He was furious.

"YOU JACKASS!" He knocked over the books on the shelf and hollered with all his might, throwing them out to fall below. Marco didn't so much as twitch. "You did this," he muttered savagely. "You ruined me!" He staggered to lean against the door, watching Marco's back with wide, teary eyes. "I had a _future_! I had everything planned out and it was going to be fine but then you ruined it! I DON'T _HAVE_ A FUTURE ANYMORE."

He hit his fist against the wall. "And I don't even care about that now. I don't give a shit about law or money or getting elected anymore. I should. I should and you messed me up."

"Everything's fine, Jean."

He laughed. He laughed at that. His laugh turned into a chuckle, and from there it dissolved into a whimper as he bit his lip and he felt the hot sting of tears. "Why are you doing this?" he whispered. "Why are you hurting me so much? I just want you to be okay. That's the only thing I want, and you can't give it to me. Why won't you just give it to me, Marco?"

"Because you're a godless sinner, you faggot." Jean jerked his eyes up at Marco's voice, and his lover was leaning against the man with the torch as he spoke, slumped against him and bleeding from where his arm had been. The man didn't have a face, and he slowly moved to press the fire up against Marco.

"You see this, right?" Why was Marco saying this? "I'm burning, Jean." His eyes were glazed again. His eyes were dying again. "You're cold and I'm burning." The man was gone and Marco's shoulder was on fire. The wall behind Jean was rotting away and falling below. Their beds were rusting.

"Marco."

His freckles moved with his skin as he smiled and stretched his remaining hand to Jean. "Come on then, Jean. Come warm up. I'll love you forever. Just take a step."

And he did. He walked slowly, until he was inches away from Marco, arm outstretched. He was smiling, because he was about to kiss him like he always did.

The fire on the remainder of Marco's sleeve spread then, slithering down his leg to fan out across the floor. Jean gasped, and the flames ate Marco whole. The floor burned away, and all he was left with was the sensation of wind combing his hair as he passed though dark clouds.

Marco wasn't in the sky.

XVI.

He'd initially studied law, but he didn't have a clue about what was going on in that trial. Everything passed in a haze.

He'd felt eyes on him and for a moment he'd thought the judge was hitting him with the gavel. His ears were ringing.

They got community service and six months at a reformatory. He got the asylum.

Marco. Marco. Marco.

_'I'm scared.'_

XVII.

He fell backwards. He did the things of the old Jean. He tried to save himself the most comfortable stay at Sina. A smile for the nurse. An offer to help clean up the mess hall later.

He felt empty.

He felt cold.

They gave him shocks and ice baths and pills and misery. They gave him misery to wear on his white uniform. It matched perfectly.

XVIII.

Far away, he felt fingertips gently peeling at the bandages wrapped around his body. His vision was bleary when he finally opened his eyes, and he almost felt the ghost of a limb. But that was too hard to think about. He'd deal with the arm later. Right then, he needed good news. He needed hope to grow his arm back.

"Jean?" he asked her.

She didn't even glance at his face. "Your 'roommate?' He's long gone. Those fraternity boys really gave it to him good. You should count yourself lucky that you're still here."

He'd have rather focused on the arm.

XVIIII.

Somehow, he ended up in his parent's house. He expected harsh glares mixed with sympathy or some confrontation about what he'd become in college. He'd been prepared for that.

He hadn't been prepared for silence at the dinner table. He hadn't been prepared for never seeing his mother's eyes because she wouldn't look at him. He hadn't been prepared for his father hiding behind a newspaper whenever he wheeled into the den.

He hadn't been prepared to wake up without someone next to him in bed.

XX.

The middle of nowhere was the perfect place to be. Sitting in his armchair, nestled safely in one of the smaller towns, he turned the dial on the radio.

"France and the rest of Europe have been liberated!"

He calmly sipped at his coffee. He let the radio play all night long, wondering what Jean thought about Truman or Churchill or Hitler. Maybe he'd have danced to those words. Marco wouldn't ever know.

He glanced at the stack of papers on the bookshelf. A while back he'd pulled the poems out and crossed his name off the front. In red ink, he scribbled Jean Kirstein beneath.

He sighed.

He slept.

He survived.

XXI.

This kid was getting on his nerves. He only had to see him in the common area or when they had kitchen duty together, but shit if Eren Jaeger wasn't the most annoying ass on the planet. He didn't understand why Levi liked him so much.

Boo hoo for him. His dad kicked him out because he was gay.

At least he still had two arms. At least he had a lover.

Fuck Eren. Fuck him and his stupid escape plan and his stupid face and the way he looked at Levi the same way Jean used to look at Marco.

These walls were eating him alive; he swore it. The ice baths had frozen his heart through the center, the shocks had fried his hope.

He walked over to the chess table.

He got involved.

He was going to save himself.

XXII.

The scar was there that morning too. Sometimes he felt the ghost of flames over his face, searing the skin. It was never really there though. Marco slowly buttoned up his shirt, and went out on the front porch to water his plants.

When he looked up, there was a boy standing in the middle of the street with his fists in his pocket and a determined stare. They made eye contact. In that instant, he was marching up to Marco's porch.

"Can I help you?"

He glanced down, toeing the ground and rolling his ankle as his shoulders hunched forward. "Yeah. I think you really can." He clumsily stuck his hand out. "My name's Eren Jaeger. I think we should go inside."

XXIII.

_"I was just released from Sina Asylum. I'm planning an escape for my friends. One of them is named Jean Kirstein. And yeah, it's him. He told me about you. He doesn't think you're alive, but I like to prove him wrong. He's fun to piss off, you know? Marco?"_

He knew he was crying. He knew he had let this stranger into his house, and now he was sobbing.

He hadn't known that relief could hurt so much.

XXIV.

It fucking _hurt. _Every bump of the road that jostled his leg made him tear down on his lip in pain. Annie's bullet was lodged in his thigh and it was pounding. He knew Hanji was talking to him, but he just nodded haphazardly to whatever she was saying. Nothing registered but the throbbing.

It was the last time he'd ever take a shot for Eren fucking Jaeger.

XXV.

There were voices swarming over him and then couch cushions under his weary form. His eyes were screwed shut in pain, but there was so much tension that seemed to just vanish at the threshold of the door.

Someone had a hand resting on his cheek like he was a phantom. Someone with a voice like dew. Freckles. Little constellations of the skin. It wasn't real. Eren was tricking him. He was dead. He was something not here because if he was on earth, Marco wasn't, and gosh was that really him leaning above?

"M-Marco?"

There was a sweetness on his lips and then Hanji was there, and shooed him out. Then there was more pain. tearing and brutal and pulling his voice from him.

There was sleep. There was the ticking of the clock on the wall. There was a warm breathing beside him.

XXVI.

His ears were buzzing. From the corner of his eye, he kept catching glances of his hair that still clung to the chemical odor of the dye. The others were long gone on their way to the harbor, and it was just the two of them again.

Again.

There was a drifting, hovering space between them that neither was sure how to breach. Jean took the time to drink Marco in, the new Marco.

He'd lost the shy boyishness from their school days, but still seemed as warm as the day they met. The scars ran down the side of his face, healed now and vanishing under the collar of his shirt. The sleeve was flat, shifting slightly from the breeze that was coming from the ceiling fan. There was a weariness in his eyes, but something glimmered in their depths — a kind of savage hope.

"What happened to you?" The question was soft spoken around the edges as it slipped from Marco's mouth, but it inflated until the silence burst like a balloon.

"You know," he said. "They put me away. I blackmailed Jaeger into letting me in on his escape plan. The psychiatrist shot me. Now I'm here. End of story."

Marco stared at the floor as a bitter smile crept. "I almost think you would have made a decent politician." He sighed and forced himself to look at his once-upon-a-time lover. "Jean," he started. And it just ached the way he said his name after so long. "I get it. It's just...we need to start somewhere."

He let himself fall back into the cushions, resigned. "Sorry. You're right." He closed his eyes and didn't even hear Marco get up from across the room. He just suddenly felt a cool hand on his. For a moment, he forgot to speak, lost in the memories of those hands and tactless youth. He'd forgotten that Marco's hands were always cool to the touch.

"I can start if you want."

Jean couldn't meet his gaze. "Okay. Yeah."

So Marco started from waking up in the hospital. He talked through the years and spun them down into a little less than an hour. The ghost limb sensations, his parents, the sight of their dorm room emptied of their belongings on the day he left, the wandering, the wondering, the aching, the house... He just talked. And it was almost like they were nineteen again as they discussed the pressure of finals.

And then it was Jean's turn, and he realized that just talking was really hard. He knew it was detached. He was nearly robotic in his storytelling because if he let himself feel the words and relive it all again he'd break. He'd break under all that sadness and Marco's slowly warming hand.

Shocks. Ice baths. Beatings. Shitty food. No visitors for him. No mail from his parents. Fences. The shrinks. Reverting to old ways. Manipulating. He laid it all on the table.

Marco listened.

The silence came back into the room, but it didn't wedge itself between them. It simply floated in the air while their fingers slid to interlock more tightly. Finally, Jean laughed a little, and Marco did too.

Jean steeled himself, and met Marco's gaze. He wondered if the other could see the time etched into his skin as well. "God, I missed you."

And he felt teardrops falling onto their hands as Marco wept. He smiled and wept all at once just the way Jean remembered he did. Jean pulled Marco's hand to his cheek and nuzzled into it. They didn't kiss. There was too much hurting and it was too raw to breach in that moment. But they would, given time. They both knew that.

In a month, they'd be in France. All the way across the Atlantic. And they'd live together, eat together, make love together, and live in a poetic echo of their days in the dorm.

But this time, it would be forever.

...

_Author's Note: There you have it. Wow. That took a while. I hope it is to standard._

_Thanks,_

_Valor Theory_


End file.
